Cartoon Shames Black Character’s Natual Hair

Natural hair has been on the come up for the last few years. Not just in popularity, but in normalcy too. It’s more and more common to see women rocking natural hair in media, and even brands have begun to understand the need to cater to that natural population.

Positive representation is important, and when it comes to natural hair we’re getting a lot more of it as women, but what about little Black girls?

It’s important for them to see faces that look like theirs in media, but even more important for them to know that they’re natural self is okay.

Resident reigning queen of shade, Skai Jackson, has been holding strong as a primary Disney Channel character who has always rocked her natural tresses, but another children’s show may have set progress all the way back.

The Facebook page for The Love Life of An Asian Guy (TLLAG), a page known for posting about controversial racial topics, posted a video clip from the Nickelodeon show :”The Winx Club.”

In the clip, the sole black character is seen in the hallway crying about her hair being a catastrophe because normally it ‘s straight but when she went outside that day it turned into an afro.

There is so much that goes wrong in the minute long clip.

First all of the girls are fawning over the blonde character, referring to her hair as “gold silk.” The Black girl’s hair is referred to as “it”, and every time another girl looks at it she cringes and offers reassurance that they could “fix it” which of course implies that something is wrong with her afro.

As if the looks of shock and disgust on the girls faces aren’t enough, one of them walks up and touches the girl’s hair, cringing as the hair jiggles to a comedic “boing” sound effect.

When the girl runs out of the room she meets another group of White girls with straight her, who again shame her for her afro.

As TLLAG points out, this episode made it through “an entire production team of illustrators, voice actors, editors and producers[who] saw this bullshit, gave it a thumbs up, and let it run on TV.” Which probably means there were no Black women anywhere on that production team.

It’s 2016 and these are the messages still being sent to young Black girls, is it any wonder we’re still battling so much self hate?